01-18-2011, 12:00 AM
Thought this was an interesting perspective on attack and defence from ACIM. I replace religious nomenclature with 'Infinity' and suchlike when I read this stuff.
"If I defend myself I am attacked.
Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the
attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? And
herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and
then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions,
thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do when you
attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present
as you wish.
You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is
happening because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat
is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is
danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. The
world is based on this insane belief. And all its structures, all its
thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal
definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all
serve but to preserve its sense of threat. For no one walks the world in
armature but must have terror striking at his heart.
Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each
defense is made. You think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made
real and terror justified. Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as
you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks
more tight, what you defend, and how, and against what?
Let us consider first what you defend. It must be something that is
very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey,
unable to protect itself and needing your defense. What but the body has
such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful
to protect its little life? What but the body falters and must fail to
serve the Son of God as worthy host?
Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing of fear. It has
no needs but those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated
structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no
concern at all. Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful
or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief
of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with
your very life.
Is not this picture fearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept
of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus
except your own belief? It is your mind which gave the body all the
functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile
of dust and water. Who would make defense of something that he
recognized as this?
The body is in need of no defense. This cannot be too often
emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it
by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope,
and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. Such attempts,
ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad
attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs,
your values and your dreams.
The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and
hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart
from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through
which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want
to keep it when its usefulness is done?
Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in
it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you
think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from
bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that
comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart
from other minds and separate from its Source.
These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond
with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This
is the body's only real defense. Yet is this where you look for its
defense? You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no
benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not
heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see
where hope must lie if it be meaningful.
A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans that it
receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. It waits until
it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It
does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill
the plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles can
not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal that serves the
greater plan established for the good of everyone.
A healed mind is relieved of the belief that it must plan, although
it cannot know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is
achieved, nor how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to
solve. It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is
so. But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets
the body go.
Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to
save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be the means of
helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection, and which needs
its service for a little while. In this capacity is health assured. For
everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with
the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.
It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are
but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They
are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own
protection, at the cost of truth. This is not difficult to realize in
some forms which these self-deceptions take, where the denial of reality
is very obvious. Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.
The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up
control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided
for, unless it makes its own provisions. Time becomes a future
emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past
events and previous beliefs. It overlooks the present, for it rests on
the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future
course.
The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has
learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past
experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see
that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite
unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs.
Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the
way.
Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their
aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider
incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is
meaningless indeed. For it is your reality that is the "threat" which
your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.
What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that
happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by
One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His
plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not
let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While
you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life.
Your present trust in Him is the defense that promises a future
undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy that constantly
increases, as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding
only immortality. Let no defenses but your present trust direct the
future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that
only your defenses would conceal.
We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this
is part of what was planned for us. We will be sure that everything we
need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no plans
for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all
that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.
For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and
from every thought that blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today
we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize.
And we are given truly, as we say:
If I defend myself I am attacked. But in defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my defenses hide.
Nothing but that. If there are plans to make, you will be told of
them. They may not be the plans you thought were needed, nor indeed the
answers to the problems which you thought confronted you. But they are
answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered yet in
need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.
All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will
receive today. And in the light and joy of simple trust, you will but
wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release.
Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for
sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended,
you present yourself to your Creator as you really are."
"If I defend myself I am attacked.
Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the
attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? And
herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and
then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions,
thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do when you
attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present
as you wish.
You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is
happening because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat
is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is
danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. The
world is based on this insane belief. And all its structures, all its
thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal
definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all
serve but to preserve its sense of threat. For no one walks the world in
armature but must have terror striking at his heart.
Defense is frightening. It stems from fear, increasing fear as each
defense is made. You think it offers safety. Yet it speaks of fear made
real and terror justified. Is it not strange you do not pause to ask, as
you elaborate your plans and make your armor thicker and your locks
more tight, what you defend, and how, and against what?
Let us consider first what you defend. It must be something that is
very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey,
unable to protect itself and needing your defense. What but the body has
such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful
to protect its little life? What but the body falters and must fail to
serve the Son of God as worthy host?
Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing of fear. It has
no needs but those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated
structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no
concern at all. Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful
or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief
of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with
your very life.
Is not this picture fearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept
of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus
except your own belief? It is your mind which gave the body all the
functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile
of dust and water. Who would make defense of something that he
recognized as this?
The body is in need of no defense. This cannot be too often
emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it
by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope,
and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. Such attempts,
ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad
attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs,
your values and your dreams.
The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and
hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart
from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through
which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want
to keep it when its usefulness is done?
Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in
it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you
think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from
bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that
comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart
from other minds and separate from its Source.
These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond
with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This
is the body's only real defense. Yet is this where you look for its
defense? You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no
benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not
heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see
where hope must lie if it be meaningful.
A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans that it
receives through listening to wisdom that is not its own. It waits until
it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It
does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill
the plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles can
not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal that serves the
greater plan established for the good of everyone.
A healed mind is relieved of the belief that it must plan, although
it cannot know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is
achieved, nor how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to
solve. It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is
so. But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets
the body go.
Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to
save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be the means of
helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection, and which needs
its service for a little while. In this capacity is health assured. For
everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with
the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.
It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are
but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They
are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own
protection, at the cost of truth. This is not difficult to realize in
some forms which these self-deceptions take, where the denial of reality
is very obvious. Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.
The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up
control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided
for, unless it makes its own provisions. Time becomes a future
emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past
events and previous beliefs. It overlooks the present, for it rests on
the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future
course.
The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has
learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past
experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see
that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite
unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs.
Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the
way.
Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their
aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider
incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is
meaningless indeed. For it is your reality that is the "threat" which
your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.
What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that
happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by
One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His
plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not
let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While
you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life.
Your present trust in Him is the defense that promises a future
undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy that constantly
increases, as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding
only immortality. Let no defenses but your present trust direct the
future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that
only your defenses would conceal.
We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this
is part of what was planned for us. We will be sure that everything we
need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no plans
for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all
that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.
For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and
from every thought that blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today
we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize.
And we are given truly, as we say:
If I defend myself I am attacked. But in defenselessness I will be strong, and I will learn what my defenses hide.
Nothing but that. If there are plans to make, you will be told of
them. They may not be the plans you thought were needed, nor indeed the
answers to the problems which you thought confronted you. But they are
answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered yet in
need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.
All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will
receive today. And in the light and joy of simple trust, you will but
wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release.
Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for
sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended,
you present yourself to your Creator as you really are."